A Breath of Fresh Air

We made our way back to the boardwalk and the Mark.

I have to admit that, after having been introduced to his sniper, I was a little less sensitive about Eldon's make-believe balance problems.

We were tethered together by the circumstances, but I was going to do my level best to stay at the far end of the leash. I couldn't wander off, but that didn't mean I had to come when he said “heel.”

“How about a picture?” I said.

“What a great idea,” said the Mark. “I'll take one of you and Eldon.”

We lined up against the railing and squinted into the afternoon sun.

It was a beautiful day.

I felt the phone in my pocket vibrate for a third time.

I was pretty certain that producing the phone in front of Eldon would come with a penalty, so I would have to pick my moment.

“Now you two,” I said.

“Oh no, I look a fright,” said the Mark.

“Nonsense,” I said. “You look terrific, and besides, this is an historic moment for all of us. Who knows if any of us will ever be back here again?”

“Oh all right, if you're sure I don't look too bad,” said the Mark.

She handed me her phone.

There was a small bar graph in the upper-left corner of the screen. Three of the five spaces on the chart were filled in.

I did my best impression of a Luddite as I searched through the phone's apps for the web browser.

I caught a break when the search engine came up. It was one I had used before and I know it came with an image search function that incorporated the phone's camera.

World domination through data was going to work for me, for a change.

“Now come on, you two, let's pretend for the folks at home that you know each other.”

The Mark and her make-believe husband moved a little closer together as I zoomed and focused the camera.

“Maybe without the hat,” I said to the Mark. “Give the public what they want.”

A little flattery goes a long way. The Mark pulled off her hat and she lit up like a Christmas tree.

Perfect.

“Tits up, as they used to say.”

I pressed the shutter and then I pressed the Image Search button.

An hourglass icon appeared on the screen.

“Come on, Big Data,” I said to myself as images of rabbit's feet danced through my head.

“Is there a problem?” the Mark asked.

Still waiting.

“I'm not sure,” I said. “Maybe I didn't have it adjusted right. May be we should do another one, just in case.”

“Okay,” said the Mark. “But we're over my daily quota.”

“Deal: I promise not to take your picture tomorrow, if I'm still around.”

I glanced back at the phone. It was hard to see the screen with the sun behind me, but the Internet had found some matches based on the first picture.

A lot of matches.

I looked at the screen and then at the Mark, then back to the screen, and back to the Mark. I couldn't believe that the computer had seen something that I missed completely.

Cinnamon.

There was another buzz in my pocket.

“Is there a problem?” the she asked.

“No,” I answered faster than I should have.

“Are you going to take the picture?”

“Right away,” I said.

I switched back to the camera function and took a proper picture. It wasn't half-bad, if I do say so myself.

Of course, she was used to being photographed by the best in the world.

Play the Mark, save the Mark.

Save the Mark....

I was getting confused all over again; this had to be some kind of a test.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

“Yes. It's just I –.” I had to make this convincing, just in case. “It's just that I didn't take my pills this morning.”

“Do you have them with you?” She seemed genuinely concerned, I had never seen that from her. Ever.

“Well, no. This whole thing came together so fast, I didn't have time to go back to the room.”

That was true.

“Can we go back?” asked Make-Believe Eldon.

“Of course we can,” said the Make-Believe Mark.

“Are you sure?” I asked. “I mean, your plans.... I don't want to ruin your trip.”

“Nonsense,” she said. “You haven't ruined a thing.”

We turned and started to walk toward the car with the two of them in front of me.

I pulled the phone out of my pocket and glanced at the screen.

There were four text messages. They all said the same thing: “WHERE'S BARNEY?”

The walk back to the car suddenly seemed very long and the effort to move my feet enormous.

I ran across a mechanic one time. His favorite tool was the plastic bag. He claimed that he could get an airtight seal in under a second.

He would bag a target and get them all excited, all thrashing around and then he'd let a little fresh air into the bag. Not a lot, just enough to get their hopes up, kind of an intermission before the final act.

Of course, by the time he did that, the target is gasping and panting and all panicking so the breath of fresh air is just enough to register, to raise their hopes, before it's all used up.

He was a sick son of a bitch and so it didn't phase me at all when he came up without a chair when the job was over.

And right at that moment, all those years later, walking back to the car, I was thinking about him as I savored the sweet, salty sea air on that that sunny fall day.

The Price of Why

What do you mean, it's taking too long? How do you know how long it's supposed to take? It takes what it takes.

You asked me a question and I'm telling you.

It's important that you understand why. I don't want you thinking.... It's just important you understand.

I know what happens when there are misunderstandings.

I just know, okay?

Okay?

Okay then.

Where was I?

Oh yeah, in the bathroom, the phone call; the dog....

I love that dog. He's not one of those love-me-love-me-love-me dogs, in your face all the time. More like he's on a schedule and he'll fit you in if he can type of dogs. Suits me just fine. Don't know I could handle more than that.

I found him in a shelter. He'd been rescued and then rescued from the rescue. People say they want a big dog and then are surprised when the dogs get big.

People lie all the time.

Dogs, never.

I miss my dog.

This was all about the dog, you understand?

I didn't start out that way. Pretty sure it didn't—at least for me. But they made it about the dog and that's not cool.

Tug was our game.

“It's just up here on the right, if I'm not mistaken,” I said to the Mark. “Of course it's all different now, but it should be just ahead.”

It looked just like it did in the brochure, but I supposedly hadn't been here in more than two generations, so I had to dress it up a bit.

It was a bright, early Fall day.

For maybe two or three weeks out of the year, the weather is the ideal mix of cool and dry and bright and clear. It's easy to be outside and it feels like a concert encore: the last of the end before everyone has to go home.

We pulled into a parking area overlooking a rocky beach.

The season over, the restrooms and snack shack were boarded up and the grass had the bad taste to grow after the mowers had been put up for the year, so the place looked a little seedier than in the brochure.

But it seemed clear it was a popular place during the summer. There were lots of cigarette butts still evident in the grass and along the edges of the parking lot. Paper cups rolled back and forth, like a hanging lamp on a wave-tossed lamp.

This was a place when, during the season, kids come to play, teenagers to rehearse and people of my generation to remember playhing and rehearsing.

Slowly, we made our way across the parking lot and on to the paved trail that lead to the beach.

The sea grass on the top of the dunes was getting a Zumba-style workout in the wind blowing in off the ocean.

The sound of sea meeting shore is always impressive, always intimidating, always hypnotic.

The asphalt path had taken us to a boardwalk bridge over the dunes and then to a flight of stairs leading down to the beach.

In the two months since the end of the season, the beach had already started to reclaim these man-made intrusions. Drifts of sand made parts of the boardwalk almost impassable.

On one of the many landings before the beach, there was a large drift and it had a single shoe print and single paw print right next to that.

A sign.

“Eldon wants to go with you,” called the Mark.

I had decided I wanted to walk out to the water. It had been a long time since I had set foot on any beach and I was certain that this might very well be my last time.

I had offered to help them down the stairs, but the Mark was worried about her balance.

So, I left them there, but I guess Make-Believe Eldon changed his mind.

Salt air and thousands of hands had taken this season's finish off the handrails and so, while we needed them for support, we couldn't rely on them because you could see the slivers of wood waiting to find a home in the squishiest parts of your hand.

Getting to the bottom was not the end of the road. There was a brief isthmus of sand and then a large sandstone terrace that dropped another five feet to the broadest section of the beach and the ocean.

A minefield of trip hazards.

Step-stop-step-stop, rest, plan, step-stop-step-stop. Repeat.

When we got there, the beach was broad and firmly packed. We could walk more easily.

We turned and waved at the Mark.

“Which way?” I asked.

“Up to you,” said the Man Known as Eldon.

“Who are you?”

“I'm the key.”

“What are you talking about?” I felt certain I would die of old age and still not know what the hell was going on.

“You want your life back, I can make that happen for you..., in exchange for a small service.”

“Back to the Palace, I know, but what's the play? Why all the smoke?”

“I thought you were a professional. Be a professional. Take the deal, don't take the deal, but don't whine. I can't stand working with whiners.”

“But you're not working with me, are you?” I said. “What's to stop me from dropping you right here and walking off the board?”

“Nothing. Nothing at all.”

I could feel the phone in my pocket start to vibrate.

“You don't know me,” he continued. “You know nothing about my background, but I think you have, by now, some sense of my skill set. You want to take the chance that I won't break cover, that's your perogative, but there will be consequences.”

He reached over to brush something off my chest and that's when I saw it.

“She's very good,” he said.

It was hard to pay attention to him, I was fixed on the red dot that danced across the back of his hand before returning to the mid-point on my sternum.

“The sheet cake was supposed to be the end of all this. They put me out, threw me back to the world. Why, after all this time, would you want me for this side show?”

“That's not important.”

“It's important to me,” I said.

“Why costs. You're a how person: how do we get from A to B? How to we make an elephant disappear on cue and under fire? Why is above your pay grade.”

He was absolutely right, of course. How is the state where operators live. Why is where you move when you get older. How is the menu, why is the price list.

“You obviously have an infrastructure,” I said. “Why can't you get whatever you need through your own people.”

As soon as I said that, I knew the answer.

“Exactly,” he said.

“I'm not....”

“No.”

“Who's the Mark?” I asked after we had walked a little more.

“By the time you find out, it'll be too late,” he said.

We walked a little more.

Every few steps, I would look down.

It was still there.

“I think we should turn back, don't you?” he said.

I felt the phone ion my pocket vibrate again.

We turned and Make-Believe Eldon waved at the Mark.

She waved back.

Tug Was Our Thing

“Do you think it has changed a lot?”

I was too busy cross-referencing my list of questions to hear that the Mark was talking to me. It was not until she called me by name that I caught on.

“Excuse me?”

“Since you were here, do you see a lot of changes?”

“I am having trouble recognizing anything familiar,” I answered honestly.

“Eldon, when was the last time we were down here?”

Make-believe Eldon must have been working on his own list, because he didn't respond to her either.

“Eldon?”

She let go of the steering wheel with her right hand and reached over to touch him on the leg. He started just as he had when I got too close to him earlier.

He looked down to the Mark's hand and then, as though following the line of her arm, he slowly raised his head until their eyes met.

“Yes, dear?” he said.

“Do you remember the last time we were out here?” the Mark asked.

“Yesterday?”

He had a strange expression on his face as though he knew the right answer, but was not certain if that fit the question he was answering.

You had to admire the craftsmanship.

“That's right. He's right, we were out here yesterday afternoon,” said the Mark.

“We were hoping to get a room over the water, but, with it being off-season and all....” Her voice trailed off.

“I am surprised with all these places that are here now, that one wouldn't be open.” I was aware of the effort it took to speak slowly and loudly enough to be heard over the road noise.

“So were we,” said the Mark. “One of the reasons we went into town was to call around and make sure we had a place before we needed to find one.”

“Good thinking,” I said before slumping back into my seat.

“After we're done at the park, we're headed to Murray Hill. Ever been there?”

Now it was my turn to be startled.

It couldn't have been a coincidence....

Save the Mark, play the Mark.

What could be in it for me to voluntarily go back to the Palace? That didn't make any sense.

I was out and I wanted to stay out.

Walking away from these two would not be difficult, especially if Pretend Eldon was intent on not breaking character. But, if I walked off the field, I would have to go dark and stay dark.

There was a time, right after the sheet cake, that I was ready to do that. I had plans and back-up plans, go-bags and dead-drops all worked out, but it's a full-time job keeping that current. The more time went by, the more people died, the safer I felt.

You can't stand guard duty all the time.

Like newstands, my networks began to close down one after the other until there were just a handful of drops around my house and I'm not sure I remember where all of them are anymore.

No, running was not an option; who would take care of my dog?

I had to play the hand.

Play the mark, save the Mark.

As I stared out the car window watching the cows that were watching us, I ran through a series of plays; if-this-then-that scenarios.

All I managed to accomplish was to give myself a headache.

“Can we stop for a moment?” I asked the Mark. “I need to find a restroom.”

“Oh, certainly,” she said. “What a good idea. It's about time for elevenses anyway. Eldon?”

Again, the Mark reached over and touched her make-believe husband on his leg and he jumped just as though someone had handed him a bare wire in a rainstorm.

“What? Oh...,” he said.

“I'm sorry, dear. I was just wondering if you'd like a coffee.”

“What time is it?”

“Just about eleven, dear.”

“Oh, I don't know. It's too early to take my pills, but if you two want to, that'll be fine.”

“What about the restroom?” she countered.

“Probably a good idea,” he said.

“That's settled then,” said the Mark. “Now we just have to figure out where.”

“I wonder where the locals go?” I said to nobody in particular.

“On vacation,” saod Eldon.

It was a good line, expertly timed and the Mark received it in much the same way as when her first-born first said “Mama.”

She laughed at the joke and said to me under her breath, “He's still in there.”

The man known as Eldon turned around to look at me. His mouth was smiling, but he had those operator eyes again.

I needed more intel: some sort of a handle on what was going on.

So far, this had been a two-handed game: me and the dealer. The phone and the atlas code at least introduced the possibility of a third player.

I needed a read on that person.

“There's a place,” I said.

“Where?” asked the Mark.

“Ahead on the left. See where the truck pulled out?”

“I see it,” said the Mark.

“It looks like a souvenir shop,” said Eldon.

“They might have coffee,” I said. “But they're certain to have a restroom.”

And a chance to introduce myself to the newest player.

The relatively smooth highway road surface gave way to the crushed stone of the gift shop's parking lot and it suddenly seemed as though we were driving on a carpet of bubble wrap.

I remember it feeling good to be out of the car: I was reaching my limit on confined spaces.

We were getting closer to the ocean. You could smell the salt in the air. It immediately reminded me of trips I used to make with the family.

We were never ones to go to a place and stay there, we were samplers. We would visit a place long enough to collect all the brochures and buy the authorized set of slides and then it was back in the car and on to the next place.  

The gift shop smelled.

There is no other way to describe it.

I'm sure the owners meant well: each display, each line of merchandise seemed to chosen because it fit their very personal vision about what an almost-seaside community should be, or smell like, but when you put a complete line of scented candles next to a complete line of flavored popcorn, next to a full-service flavored coffee bar, a cotton candy station and a tank full of barely alive lobsters, the overwhelming impression was more bus station restroom than tourist attraction.

I pushed through the various scent fronts and headed to the back of the store.

Sure enough, there was a restroom.

The moment I walked in, it was clear, they were waiting for the end of the season to clean.  Management's idea of sanitation was to change the cartridge in the deodorizer to an ever-increasing strength.

I closed the door behind me, locked it, and threw my weight up against it.

I fished the phone out of my pocket and punched in the numbers.

“I see you haven't lost your taste for the classics,” said the voice that answered.

“The good ones never go out of style,” I said.

“You have questions,” said the Voice.

“What I have is a dog,” I said. “He needs me. He doesn't like a lot of people.”

“Is that nature, or nurture, I wonder,” said the Voice.

“They say opposites attract,” I said after a pause.

“But then there are exceptions to every rule,” the Voice replied.

“Enough romance.”

“Agreed.”

“What's the threat?”

“We don't know.”

“Are you--? Is this some kind of test?”

“No.... But you will be graded.”

“The operator?”

“What operator?”

“The--. He knew me at the Palace.”

“Friendly?”

“I don't know what that means anymore.”

“What did they want?”

“I'm supposed to get us back to the Palace by the end of the day.”

“Why?”

“No idea.”

“Find out what you can,” said the Voice.

“How's my dog?”

“Check your phone,” the Voice said just before the line went dead.

As I pulled the phone away from my ear, I felt it vibrate. A banner appeared on the screen indicating I had received a text message.

Attached to the message was a video of my dog playing tug with the anonymous cameraman.

Tug, that was our thing.

I moved away from the door to wash my hands. I had only touched the door, but I felt I needed whole body decontamination.

There was a knock at the door.

“Just a minute, “ I said.

A Card from a Different Deck

Outside.

I was outside the wire for the first time in God knows how long.

No idea where I was, no idea how long I had been gone, only a travel brochure's worth of an idea of where we were going.

It was like the old days.

We would be on our way home from a job and suddenly get re-routed, put on to a new thing before the old thing had been written up and filed away.

Nothing good ever came out of those jobs.

Everybody said we were at our best when we could take the time to craft our play, to not only breed the rabbit, but also to make the hat out of which it would be pulled.

We could do short turnarounds. We did a lot of them. But they were never our best work.

To properly play a mark takes the kind of time that Make-Believe-Eldon was putting in. He was clearly on a first-name basis with all the pieces on the board. I, on the other hand, stuck out like a card from a different deck brought in to make up the full fifty-two.

The Mark waved at me from near the end of one of the parking lot rows.

I slid into the back seat and away we went.

I watched out of the car's back window as the Palace got smaller and smaller and then disappeared entirely. Glad to be away from that place and pissed off that I was now expected to contrive a reason that would bring us back here before the end of the day.

In a series of slow dissolves, the high-rise buildings around the Palace became the low-rise buildings of low-rent and retail before they became the high-rent suburbs and farmland.

In addition to the road noise, there was the soft murmur of public radio. My hearing is not what it used to be, but from what I could make out, the presenters were talking about birdhouses.

The sun seemed to twinkle as it passed through the barren trees. The greens and rusts were soothing to the eye. It was easy to get lost in your memories.

Occasionally, there were outbreaks of conversation from the front seat. About every five minutes the Mark would try to connect with her pretend partner. She would ask about events from his past, from their lives together, from their uncertain future. They were not intended to be threatening; they were gentle reminders of the life that she thought was leaving him behind.

“Do you remember when...?”

“Where were we when we saw...?”

“Is that a Turkey Vulture?”

He would struggle to get out his binoculars before giving up and saying “Oh, I don't know.” And his voice would trail off and silence would return.

They tried engaging me in conversation, but the car was just big enough and the white noise smoothie of road sounds and radio was just loud enough to make talking difficult.

Once, I leaned forward to thank them for including me in their trip and the Man Known as Eldon flinched as though I had startled him. The Mark warned me about making sudden movements and that was the end of our social time.

That was fine with me because it left more time to study the brochure that I had swiped from the Palace.

I watched the farms flicker by like the images on an old zoetrope.

It was an odd mix of new, pre-fab barns set up close to the road and decaying timber frame structures set well back from the road like old grey sway-backed mares that had been put out to pasture.

I must have dozed off because I remember at one point looking down and discovering that my brochure had slipped from my lap.

I leaned over to pick it up and that's when I saw it.

It was one of those large-format road atlases that used to be so popular before everybody's phones got so clever.

There was a post-it note stuck to the cover and my name was on it.

“Do you mind if I look at your atlas? I want to see if I can get my bearings if I'm going to play tour guide.”

“Atlas?” the Mark asked. “Oh, that must have come with the car. It's a rental. Feel free.”

“Thanks,” I said.

As I pulled the book from the seat pocket, I could tell that this copy had some supplements that were added after publication.

I opened to the bulge in the center and quickly slid the cellphone into my pocket.

I peeled the note from the cover and saw that there was also what looked like a phone number.

An atlas code? I hadn't seen one of those since....

I quickly thumbed through the pages to confirm that someone was trying to tell me something.

The phone number was written with all eleven digits, including the long-distance prefix—a charming throwback to a pre-wireless time: my time.

Three groupings: that told me I was looking for a set of three words.

I turned to the first dog-eared page.

There was a grid printed over the map with letters along the top margin and numbers down both sides.

On this first map, one of the letters and three of the numbers were circled.

S.

1,4,5.

On the next marked page, I found A, E, V. There were no circled numbers, but there was another sticky note. It had a simple arrow drawn on it pointing to the town of “Murray Hill.”

The next page had no letters, but it had five marked numbers: 2,3,6,8 and 9.

The next page brought me the letters E, H and T.

Two more pages and I had A, K, M and R.

The phone number on the sticky was the key. Three words and a phone number.

I had a phone, a three word message and a phone number.

And a whole new set of questions.

I was out, then I was in.

They want my help, but they won't tell me for what.

I was being held, then I'm released.

I'm supposed to bring the Mark back to the Palace at the end of the day and now I get a message telling me to “Save the Mark.”

Why?

What for?

Was any of this going to get me back to my life? My dog?

“Did you find what you were looking for?” asked the Mark.

I made like I couldn't hear her and didn't answer.